"I love that you've brought this to attention. An extensive database of uncommon but resistant and hardy plants/foods could be developed and organized by climate. Ease of growth and processing should also be taken in to account. I will try to…"
A crash course in changing the world.
Learn 1 : If someone has already invented it, you don't have to
Learn 1:
Paul Polak secret #7 says:
If someone has already invented it, you don’t have to.
This seemed like a curious idea for a social innovation “secret” but when I thought about it I saw the wisdom.
How often are resources spent re-inventing the wheel, with many organisations around the world solving the same problem in different ways? How often are challenges not taken up because the group will not be credited with finding a new solution to an existing problem?
The beauty of “If someone has already invented it, you don’t have to” is that it is liberating. It allows you to focus on the local application of the solution rather than finding a new way of doing something.
Furthermore in the case of very complex problems with many facets, this principle allows for a synthesis of already existing (potentially unrelated) solutions to come together to form a truly innovative solution to what might otherwise be seen as too complex to solve.
As an example, as a problem, children in rural Africa frequently don’t have access to personal computers and the internet. This may be for many reasons, but among them, little infrastructure for data transfer and non-existant or unreliable power connection.
“One Laptop Per Child” has employed existing technology to put low cost durable laptops in the hands of communities of children. They are all built to use existing mobile phone communication infrastructure to access the internet, and use multiple sources of energy including car batteries, and crank to generate a power charge. All of these technologies exist already, and were put together to solve this complex problem in a very innovative way.
Check out their website at: http://laptop.org/en/
How amazing would the world be if every child had a laptop connected to the internet?
Paul Polak secret #7 says:
If someone has already invented it, you don’t have to.
This seemed like a curious idea for a social innovation “secret” but when I thought about it I saw the wisdom.
How often are resources spent re-inventing the wheel, with many organisations around the world solving the same problem in different ways? How often are challenges not taken up because the group will not be credited with finding a new solution to an existing problem?
The beauty of “If someone has already invented it, you don’t have to” is that it is liberating. It allows you to focus on the local application of the solution rather than finding a new way of doing something.
Furthermore in the case of very complex problems with many facets, this principle allows for a synthesis of already existing (potentially unrelated) solutions to come together to form a truly innovative solution to what might otherwise be seen as too complex to solve.
As an example, as a problem, children in rural Africa frequently don’t have access to personal computers and the internet. This may be for many reasons, but among them, little infrastructure for data transfer and non-existant or unreliable power connection.
“One Laptop Per Child” has employed existing technology to put low cost durable laptops in the hands of communities of children. They are all built to use existing mobile phone communication infrastructure to access the internet, and use multiple sources of energy including car batteries, and crank to generate a power charge. All of these technologies exist already, and were put together to solve this complex problem in a very innovative way.
Check out their website at: http://laptop.org/en/
How amazing would the world be if every child had a laptop connected to the internet?
Views: 27
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Comment by PJE on March 26, 2010 at 5:06pm
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Thank you for the link. It a great project and I have an old blue laptop somewhere...
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